Let’s start this weekend with actors directing themselves. Philip Seymour Hoffman makes his directorial debut in Jack Goes Boating, a very quirky romance based on the Off-Broadway play which also starred Hoffman. I can’t swim either, so I’m totally into it. Then Ben Affleck returns to Beantown with The Town, a bank robbery thriller starring him and Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) as bank robbers pursued by Don Draper. more ›

By this time Monday, the dust will have settled and it is possible that The Twilight Saga: Eclipse will set a record for largest opening weekend ever. While it's fair to say that the film is the best (e.g. least shitty) of the series, one must also mention that the entire Twilight phenomenon continues to impart awful lessons about emotionally abusive and obsessive relationships to millions of young women across America. It's weirdo Mormon lessons should be alternately shunned and ridiculed. If you are indeed an actual (and not ironic) fan of the series, the same applies to you. Get off my lawn! more ›

Despite a striking visualization of comic-book style, Ang Lee's endured swarms of criticism from fans of the character when it landed in 2003. Fast-forward five years later and it's as if that film never happened as Marvel re-boots the character with The Incredible Hulk. The film went through one of those so-called "troubled" post-production periods (e.g. Ed Norton=dicky). Recent word of mouth, though, has been strong. more ›

"I wanted to believe. More than most I wanted to believe. I wanted there to be something more than this awfulness that surrounds us every day." This poignant statement of yearning and soul-gnawing dissatisfaction comes just before the climactic series of events in Lady in the Water, and it sums up why audiences flock to the films of M. Night Shyamalan: the hunger to connect to something beyond what we can see. If only... more ›